Artie and a couple of his cronies worked all Wednesday night and got it rigged the way I wanted it, including a deadeye bead on the commercial satellite currently being used by DNI for proprietary communications with Noda's Kyoto office. I figured it like this: if "Captain Midnight" could override Home Box Office's satellite network using a receiving station in Florida and broadcast a Bronx cheer to Time-Life, we could by God knock out DNI's high-security channel for an hour or so. Artie would be on standby Friday, ready to flip the switch.
Noda was apparently still in Japan, presumably busy throwing obstacles in MITI's path, or maybe searching for the remains of his silver case. Let him. We were about to start handling his communications with the DNI office for him, via a setup of our own devising.
One nice thing about global electronics is that if you get a network far-flung enough, nobody can trace anything—which was what we were counting on. After we'd killed Noda's primary communications system, we intended to substitute some Japanese hardware we'd had installed at Henderson's—together with a little help from a mutual friend in Shearson Lehman's Tokyo office. The arrangement was complicated, but it looked workable on paper. Thing was, though, we'd have to get it right the first time. No dry runs.
All of which tended to make me uneasy. You don't leave anything to chance when you're playing our kind of game; you need to have a backup. This feeling brought to mind an admonition in an old sixteenth-century text on swordsmanship, the Heiho Kaden Sho, something to the effect that "you should surprise your opponent once, and then surprise him again." So, strictly on my own, I went about a bit of bushido lawyering, using that power of attorney Noda gave me back when we started out to set up a fallback position in case Tam's scheme somehow failed. This twist, however, I decided to keep under wraps. Nobody needed to be diverted just then worrying about worst-case scenarios. That's what corporate counsels are for.
It was the most hectic week of our lives, but by three P.M. Friday we were ready, assembled at Henderson's place and poised for battle. Using his new hardware, we got on line to Shearson's Tokyo office, Bill cashing in a decade of stock tips with a longtime acquaintance. We then fed him the MITI ID codes we'd picked up from Ken during that ill-fated episode at the Tsukuba Teleconferencing Center, and he used these to patch back through to their New York JETRO offices. Finally we got St. Croix on the phone, holding.
"Time to synchronize everybody's watches." Tam was wearing her usual designer jeans, a blue silk shirt, and had her DNI flight bag freshly packed for the long days ahead.
"That thing says 3:28:37." Henderson was watching one of his monitors behind the bar, now blinking off the seconds.
"Then let's all get ready to set at 3:29," said Tam.
Which we did.
"Okay, time to roll." I punched the speakerphone. The line to St. Croix was still open.